Saturday, April 25, 2015

There Is No Such Thing as a Witch

By Abigail
Kimball, from Sheila Connolly’s Defending
the Dead

It’s me
again, and I’ve got so much to share! Last year I thought I had things all
nicely lined up: a job I liked, a nice place to live while I sorted out my
life, and a great guy, Ned Newhall. Well, the first two kind of went away when I discovered
my boss’s daughter Ellie could also see dead people like I can. That was just
about a year ago—we were getting ready for Patriots’ Day, which is a big deal
in Concord, Massachusetts.

Anyway,
Leslie (my boss) wasn’t exactly happy to hear about her daughter’s ability and
she fired me. Not that I blame her: I know it was a shock for me when I found
out I could do it, and it took me a while to get used to it. I’d never told
Leslie anything about my “gift,” and no way was she ready to hear that her
daughter had it too. And then the people whose house I was taking care of came
back, and I had nowhere to go.

So Ned
asked me to move in with him, as more than just roommates, if you know what I
mean. Which is great, because he’s a wonderful guy, and he understands this
“seeing” thing, because he has it too. Even his mother has some of it. Now we’re
living in a great old Victorian house in Lexington that Ned bought a while back and
hasn’t gotten around to fixing up, so I’m trying to do some of that. Like
stripping antique wallpaper.

But I want to
know more about this seeing thing, so I decided to give myself a test: go to
Salem and see what I could “see.” Yes, that Salem, where the witch trials took
place. I’d been there once, doing the touristy thing, but that was before… So I went to Salem and I saw…something, and I
knew there was more. Then I went back and took Ned along, and things really
started happening.

I only see
the dead through the eyes of my ancestors, and only when they were under conditions of great
stress or emotional intensity--I think that's the only way they leave a trace behind. Salem provided plenty of both. It was a kind of
overwhelming experience for me, and I learned a lot. I think most people really
don’t know what happened there—but I’ve seen some of it, and it was a really
sad time. Maybe that’s why people still visit Salem—to remember how awful it
was in 1692, so that it never happens again.

Defending the Dead is the third book in the Relatively Dead series issued by Beyond the Page Publishing. It will be available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and iTunes, as well as for other e-formats.

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